Friday, September 15, 2017

“To me The Ginger Man brings a faint suggestion in its preposterous humor of what Samuel Beckett’s Murphy might have been if Mr. Beckett hadn’t gone and got himself all snagged up in convoluted writing, or perhaps a hazy memory of Joyce Cary’s fine novel The Horse’s Mouth, though Mr. Donleavy’s Sebastian Dangerfield makes Joyce Cary’s scoundrel look like teacher’s pet. But this is just straining on my part. Mr. Donleavy’s book in style and matter need pull the forelock to nobody on earth but to Mr. Donleavy.”–Dorothy Parker, The Atlantic, July, 1958